Computer systems sometimes organize data into categories and items related to such categories. Categories may be organized in hierarchies or structures. For example, category “Companies” may contain a list of specific company names, like “Financial Services, Inc.”, “Environment Care Corp.” and “Computer Maintenance, Inc.”. Items are specific textual strings containing a single word, two, three or up to a couple of hundred words, text, or other information pieces.
Prior art systems do not efficiently handle a practically unlimited number of categories and items and/or cannot cross-reference such a large number of categories and items.
Currently, the prevailing implementations for Information Management Systems handling diversified pieces of information on personal computers are Personal Information Managers (PIM). No single product on the market fulfills the requirements of easy interface, database strength, extendibility, flexibility or other specific features, such as handling practically an unlimited number of categories and items or, more importantly, automatically storing cross-referencing between categories and items.
There are/were the following major competitors in existing PIM's market for personal computers:                Maximizer®—with a strong Btrieve database, but no cross-referencing;        Lotus Organizer®—with a strong visual interface, but no database and no cross-referencing;        Act!®—with a database and contact manager, but no cross-referencing;        Lotus Agenda®—with (DOS-based) cross-referencing, no database, now obsolete;        ECCO®—with, arguably, the best interface, but no database;        Lotus Notes®—not a PIM, but provides intelligent e-mail and document storing.        
Other information managing and scheduling programs are:                InfoCentral®—which provides information outlining,        Schedule+®—which provides networked scheduling,        Network Scheduler® 3—which provides networked scheduling.        
Lotus Agenda®, when it was commercially available, was protected by the U.S. Pat. No. 5,115,504 issued to Belove et al. The Belove patent discloses a methodology to accomplish a similar task as the present invention. However, the Belove methodology uses a different system implemented in a DOS based database. The design of the Belove system was cumbersome, limited to a linking file system and did not utilize a modern network data model design.
Act!® is recommended only for sale force automation. Maximizer® is recommended for a broad spectrum of tasks. Lotus Organizer® is preferred by some users. An easy to use interface is the single most important factor for the mass-market users. The database and networking capabilities are les important.
The invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.